Quotes from Bernhard Schlink

Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?

Flucht ist hier nicht die Beschäftigung mit der Vergangenheit, sondern gerade die entschlossene Konzentration auf Gegenwart und Zukunft, die blind ist für das Erbe der Vergangenheit, von dem wir geprägt sind und mit dem wir leben müssen

In spite of the fact that she pushed me away again and again, and again and again I crawled to her.

So I stopped talking about it. There's no need to talk, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.

As I looked and looked, the living face became visible in the dead, the young in the old. This is what must happen to old married couples, I thought: the young man is preserved in the old one for her, the beauty and grace of the young woman stay fresh in the old one for him.

Nicht das ich Hanna vergessen hätte. Aber irgendwann hörte die Erinnerung auf, mich zu begleiten.

But behavior does not merely enact whatever has already been thought through and decided. It has its own sources, and is my behavior, quite independently, just as my thoughts are my thoughts, and my decisions my decisions.

But what gave rise to the swaggering self-righteousness I so often encountered among these students? How could one feel guilt and shame, and at the same time parade one's self-righteousness?

The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. I understand this. Nevertheless, I sometimes find it hard to bear. Maybe I did write our story to be free of it, even if I never can be.

Or was it a question of how the laws were actually interpreted and enforced at the time they committed their crimes, and that they were not applied to them? What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?

Berg, Sophia may be a Greek name, but that is no reason for you to study your neighbor in a Greek lesson. Translate!

Só que fugir não é só correr de um lugar, mas também chegar a outro.

She was struggling, as she had always struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn't do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats.

Luchaba siempre, y había luchado siempre, no para mostrar a los demás de lo que era capaz, sino para ocultarles de qué no era capaz. Una vida cuyos avances eran enérgicas retiradas y cuyas victorias eran derrotas encubiertas

A veces, un final doloroso hace que el recuerdo traicione la felicidad pasada. A lo mejor es que la única felicidad verdadera es la que dura siempre.

What do you want now? Your whole life in one hour?

History is not the past as it really was. It's the shape we give it.

But love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible.

A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats.

Cho ??n khi cÆ¡n gi?n h?t hÆ¡i và nh?ng câu h?i h?t quan tr?ng. Tôi Ä'ã làm gì, không làm gì, cô Ä'ã làm gì tôi - Ä'ó chính là cuá»™c ??i tôi mà.

We all condemned our parents to shame, even if the only charge we could bring was that after 1945 they had tolerated the perpetrators in their midst.

Aber irgendwann hörte die Erinnerung an sie auf, mich zu begleiten. Sie blieb zurück, wie eine Stadt zurückbleibt, wenn der Zug weiterfährt. Sie ist da, irgendwo hinter einem, und man könnte hinfahren und sich ihrer versichern. Aber warum sollte man.

This is what must happen to old married couples, I thought: the young man is preserved in the old one for her, the beauty and grace of the young woman stay fresh in the old one for him.

Afinal eu sabia por experiência própria que a vergonha nos força a ter um comportamento esquivo, defensivo, a ocultar e a simular as coisas, inclusivamente a ferir os outros.